“In fact, the whole idea of illusion seems to make sense only if we accept the reality of the illusory experience as an experience and question only what it seems to be telling us about the outside world. Optical illusions do really hapen. What they can’t do is provide accurate measurements of the outside world. The idea of having, so to speak, two successive layers of illusion here is unworkable.”
Are You an Illusion (2014). 27.
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Mary Midgley42
British philosopher and ethicist 1919–2018Related quotes
“Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.”
David Cronenberg (1943) Canadian film director, screenwriter and actor
Source: Cronenberg on Cronenberg (1997), Ch. 5
Chapman Cohen (1868–1954) British atheist and secularist writer and lecturer
p. 96 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=wu.89009314162&view=1up&seq=100 <br class="br">Determinism or Free-will? (1912)
“For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion.”
Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools
Introduction to Ward's English Poets (1880)
Context: For poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry.
Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author
Speech "Created Equal: How Christianity Shaped The West" http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Hst/XtyShapesWest-DSouza.html (16 September 2008).
Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist
Source: 2010s, Waking Up (2014), p. 8
“There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Source: Essays and Lectures
Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian
Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 44.